The episode of my first vacation closed with that dread picture of a dead man and a white shroud, and in the lugubrious illumination of tapers, and nurse sobbing and keening, with no hope of comfort. After that the troubles of home and school looked poor enough, and for some time the nuns found me a very sober and studious little girl. It was long before even Mr. Parker could raise a smile; and Play Day, when we were permitted to do as we liked all day, found me with no livelier desire than to sit still and pore over the novels of Lady Georgiana Fullerton. Chapter XXVIII. MY FIRST COMMUNION. This period of unwonted mildness in a turbulent career was seized by the good ladies of Lysterby as a fitting moment for my first communion. It might be only a temporary lull in a course of perversity which would not occur again, and so I was ordered to study anew the lives of the saints. This was quite enough to turn my eager mind from thoughts of daring deed to dreams of sanctity. I proposed to model my life on that of each fresh saint; was in turn St. Louis of Gonzague, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Theresa and St. Stanislaus of Koscuetzo,--for the life of me I cannot remember the spelling of that Polish name, but it began with a K and ended with an O, with a mad assortment of consonants and vowels between. St. Elizabeth I found very charming, until the excessive savagery of her confessor, Master Conrad, diminished my enthusiasm. When I came to the barbarous scene where Master Conrad orders the queen to visit him in his monastery, which was against the monachal law, and then proceeds to thrash her bare back while he piously recites the Miserere, I shut the book for ever, and declined upon the spot to become a saint. Nevertheless I made my first communion in a most edifying spirit. I spent a week in retreat down in the town convent, and walked for hours up and down the high-walled garden discoursing with precocious unctuousness to my good friend Mother Aloysius, who, naïve soul, was lost in wonder and admiration of my gravity and sanctimoniousness. I meditated and examined my conscience with a vengeance. I delighted in the conviction of my past wickedness, and was so thrilled with the sensation of being a converted sinner that, like Polly Evans, gladly would I have revived the medieval custom of public confession. Contrition once more prompted me to pen a conventional letter of penitence, submission, affection, and promise of good behaviour to my mother, which virtuous epistle, like a former one, remained without an answer.